notes on Either/Or ensemble at the Kitchen, 9.14


A performance of some graphics scores from composers featured in the Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music exhibit, playing in the upstairs gallery. New music of the 50s, 60s 70s, so: old new music. The gallery was totally packed to the point of people sitting on the floor on pillows -- younger people, mostly early 30s. Very quiet, acoustic instruments, no PA. The fan sound in the back of the room over-defined the noise floor a bit....

Robert Ashley:

Drones with shifting attacks, pulses and timbres. associations of weather: snow and wind.

Morton Feldman:

Cello solo. The dynamics were played a little too tentitivly, even for Feldman. All cello techniques delivered simultainiously in a kind of technique kaleidoscope. Beautiful.

Cornelious Cardew:

This performance needed more commitment. Fascinating transformations though. And excellent texturing and control.

Christian Wolf:

These pieces seems to show off the ensemble best. Loose unison lines, like small flecks of birds moving in the sky. Not loud at all but enough volume to hear a bit more meat in the tones. It sounded like a processes of people working together at some collective task, where it means quite different things to the people invovled, yet it's unified in it's manifestation.

Earl Brown:

Delicacy handled with aplomb. Change and landscape.